Don’t start ringing the bells. The Catholic church is a long way from letting itself be sued like any other church. It knows it can no longer defend a privilege that has saved hundreds of millions of dollars since the child abuse scandal broke decades ago. But it isn’t planning to open its wallet.

One of the great powers of a royal commission is to embarrass. Cardinal Pell and the bishops can see terrible embarrassment looming as the royal commission into institutional response to child sexual abuse turns its sights on the privileged protection of the Catholic church from the courts.

Ellis had been abused for years as a boy and young man. He had been willing to settle for $100,000 but Pell called in his Melbourne lawyers and $1.5m was spent on fees to block Ellis and confirm the Catholic church in this country doesn’t exist in law, doesn’t employ its priests, isn’t responsible for their crimes and has successfully locked its assets away from victims.

Ellis told the commission how this 2006 defeat plunged him into even deeper depression for he knew his case had made things worse for victims. “Ellis” became the legal shorthand for decisions that force most victims to take what church protocols – the Melbourne Response and Towards Healing – care to offer them.

Andrew Morrison SC, once Ellis’s barrister and now the leader of the Australian Lawyers Alliance campaign for reform of this legal tangle, told Guardian Australia that no one forces the church to argue Ellis: “The church can solve this thing in one go by simply saying, we won’t take the point.”

But Pell’s archdiocese has always argued Ellis. This week, counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness SC, revealed that since Pell became Archbishop of Sydney about $10m dollars had been paid by Towards Healing after complaints from about 200 Sydney victims.

Do the sums: it’s chickenfeed.

But opinion is shifting. Governments are edging away. The church knows it can no longer defend its own stinginess. And there is every indication the royal commission will be merciless examining the lucrative privileges that deny fair outcomes to victims. So this week was the time for Pell and the bishops to express remorse and foreshadow a historic shift in church thinking.

Victims should not get their hopes up. From my discussions with church officials on the margins of the royal commission this week, they have not much to expect from Pell. Their best hope may lie with the bishops he is about to leave behind as he heads for Rome.

Pell wants to remove few barriers to litigation. He does not want the church to be given a corporate identity that would allow it to be sued. All other major faiths in Australia can be sued. So can the Catholic church in most countries in the world. But Pell wants to keep the current situation where victims of abuse by parish priests have no choice but to sue the priest or his estate of perhaps his bishop.

At present that’s futile because there is, at the end of the day, no money to be won from old priests, poor estates and retired bishops. The assets of the church remained locked up in property trusts. But Pell is proposing that the church itself should stump up the damages.

That is a historic proposition. Here he has the backing of the bishops. According to the Truth, Justice and Healing Council, which represents the church before the royal commission, the bishops have given verbal support to the principle that in future the church must pay damages when victims win in court.

But the bishops want this to flow from the fundamental change Pell flinches from: they want the church to become a corporate identity like other churches which would allow it to be sued and so be liable in the ordinary way when courts order damages to be paid.

Even so, suing the church would remain extremely difficult. What’s not clear is whether the bishops would consider dumping other legal stratagems that now bar the way for victims – in particular the church’s refusal to admit priests are employees and that the church is liable in law for their crimes.

Morrison says: “Making the assets of the church available to victims is an absolutely worthless concession unless the church is prepared to concede it is responsible for the priests who act in its name.”

Hovering over all this is the several hundred million dollar question: is this new spirit of generosity intended only for the future? What about the victims the church has fobbed off with pathetic settlements for terrible crimes, the victims who have done so much to bring this scandal before the royal commission?

“All this may be of little comfort to the thousands have already settled their claims,” Morrison says. “These reforms have to be retrospective.”